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2. Cleaning up Internet Explorer
You can remove the add-ons from Internet Explorer by clicking on the gear icon (the settings icon is shown as "Tools" on Windows XP) on the upper right corner and selecting "Manage add-ons."

Select "Toolbars and Extensions" in the right pane of the "Manage Add-ons" window and select all the extensions that are associated with Ask.com, such as Ask Toolbar (there may be several), IESalesProspectsToolbarInstaller_S-PV_tbr_sa_hpr_1.15.23.0, and askBar BHO, among others. Click on the Disable button at the bottom of the window. You can also right-click on the extension and then select Disable from the menu. This has to be done individually for each extension.

This is a good time to just clean out other unknown extensions, as well, since it could be lurking under some other name.

To change the default search engine back to Bing (by default on Internet Explorer), you click on "Search Providers" in the right pane of the same "Manage Add-ons" window. Ask.com will show up in the list. Click on the "Remove" button at the bottom of the window to get rid of it. Click on "Bing" and then the "Set as Default" button. You can also right-click to get to the same options.

You can close Manage Add-Ons at this point. Go back to the gear icon and select Internet options" from the menu. Under the General tab, in the "Home page" section, you will see various URLs. Click on "Use default" to reset the browser to the Microsoft page. If you want to have a different page, change the URL manually after you've set the browser to use the default page.

Fahmida Y. Rashid is a senior analyst for business at PCMag.com. She focuses on ways businesses can use technology to work efficiently and easily. She is paranoid about security and privacy, and considers security implications when evaluating business technology. She has written for eWEEK, Dark Reading, and SecurityWeek covering security, core Internet infrastructure, and open source.
Follow me on Twitter: zdfyrashid
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